Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley has hit back at Opposition MP, Dr. Roodal Moonilal who accused him as having a “too angry” tone on the current Venezuelan migrant controversy, describing the Oropouche East MP as “an opportunistic carbuncle”.

In his second statement on the matter in under three hours, Dr. Rowley defended his position saying: “If T&T appears to be a “soft touch flexible border neighbour, we will be overrun by tens of thousands of Venezuelans in a jiffy”.

“This issue of allowing migrants in is never a temporary situation. Invariably it results in a permanent movement of populations and that is something well known to UNHCR personnel who exploit these crises to inflate and sustain their own operational budgets. Why do you think that our open registration netted 16,000 persons when the lines became empty after two weeks of registration yet the UNHCR personnel keep inflating the figure to 60,000 even as their own registration is 12,000?” the PM asked.

He said government could not commit to pardoning everyone who enters this country.

“Is it that having provided comfort and legal registered status to the thousands of Venezuelans already here (many of whom came in illegally) that they now have the right to illegally import all their families, friends and trafficked customers into Trinidad and Tobago? The answer to this question is very simple and covered by existing laws including a visa system,” the PM said. 

Meanwhile, Oropouche East MP Dr. Roodal Moonilal has for an emergency meeting of the Joint Select Committee on National Security in the Parliament, to discuss the State’s repatriation of a group of Venezuelan nationals including 16 children.

He rejected government’s position that this country did not act irresponsibly, and described the move as “morally, legally and constitutionally indefensible.”